THE part-time chairman of the quango that promotes the southeast of England to business spent more than £50,000 on taxis and chauffeur-driven cars last year.

James Brathwaite, who chairs the South East England Development Agency (Seeda) on a three days per week contract, spent £51,489 on taxis and “executive cars” – more than his counterparts in the other eight regional agencies combined.

Even if he takes no holiday, this equates to £343 per day for his contracted time. His spokesman said he regularly works more than three days a week.

The quangos’ free-spending habits are revealed in documents obtained under the freedom of information (FOI) act, which show that expenses claims reached £8m (read the documents: click here and here). They reveal that taxpayers also subsidised cocktail parties on the French Riviera and paid to fly officials to a Bollywood award ceremony in Dubai.

Now a Commons committee, which earlier this year criticised the agencies for overlap in the way they run their overseas offices, is to launch a fresh investigation in the new year.

Norman Baker, Cabinet Office spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, who obtained the FOI figures, accused the agencies of “being cavalier with taxpayers’ money”. He demanded curbs on their expenses and an investigation by the National Audit Office.

“No elected politician would get away with this and there is no reason why obscure, unelected, unaccountable officials should either,” Baker said.

Peter Luff, Conservative chairman of the Business and Enterprise committee, said: “My committee has expressed serious concerns about overlap in spending by RDAs. These figures raise serious new questions about where and how they spend money.”

Brathwaite’s taxi bill dwarfed the £1,178 bill for the chairman of the London Development Agency (LDA), which seeks to attract business to the capital. Even Oliver Letwin, the Tory MP who made the highest Commons’ claim for “third-party” cars which includes taxis, had expenses of only £4,971.

A Seeda spokesman said Brathwaite, 54, needed to travel by taxi or with a chauffeur because he worked en route. “It enables him to make the best use of working time. The southeast is very large with a population of 8.2m. It stretches from Milton Keynes to Margate.” He travelled 37,000 miles in the year.

Seeda also spent £598,000 running 10 overseas offices and a representative in Stuttgart, Germany, was paid £89,000 for eight months’ part-time work.

In March 2007, a few weeks before film stars descended on the French Riviera, eight of the nine development agencies decided it was essential to send a contingent to a property trade fair in Cannes.

Seeda took 13 staff to Mipim, a four-day event based in the Palais des Festivals, spending £24,000 on dinner, brunch and other events at the exhibition.

Meanwhile, the LDA flew in 14 people, allowing staff to stay at four-star hotels.

The South West of England Regional Development Agency spent £61,000 at Mipim and the body promoting the West Midlands held an £8,000 cocktail reception in Cannes.

Claer Barrett, managing editor of Property Week magazine, said Mipim was “basically a four-day party” with “loads of lobster and champagne” on yachts.

Staff at Yorkshire Forward had an even more glamorous assignment: to mix with Hollywood actors, including Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Bollywood stars such as Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty, at the International Indian Film Academy weekend in Dubai in 2006. It cost £20,000 to fly 15 staff, 10 of whom flew business class, to the four-day jamboree.

Yorkshire Forward, which went on to host the film awards this year, said the flights cost so much because they were booked at short notice. Under the rules governing most agencies, staff flying more than four or five hours are also entitled to fly business class.

Other disclosures in the FOI documents include: A business class seat to Chicago cost One North East £5,450. A staff event at Center Parcs in Wiltshire cost the agency for the southwest £61,600. Another meeting to discuss efficiency savings in the Riviera centre in Torquay cost £28,000. Overseas offices in China, Japan, Korea, Australia and America cost One North East £965,530.

Tom Riordan, chief executive of Yorkshire Forward who speaks for all the RDA chairman, said the agencies’ trips abroad generated millions of pounds in investments and represented good value for money.

“For every £1 of government money spent on regional development agencies, £146 is brought back in foreign direct investment,” he said.

“The RDAs have fulfilled all that the government has asked them to do in terms of the targets set them in the first nine years we have been around.”

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